The Mummy At Home

Long, long ago, three thousand years before the ‘good old time,”

There lived a young and joyous maid in Egypt’s burning clime;

Around his cherished darling, clung a father’s hopes and fears,

And the sunshine and dew were hers—a mother’s smiles and tears.

Fair grew the child, and ripened soon to lovely womanhood,

And ‘mid the brightest of the land in virgin beauty stood,

While the rosy light of love revealed that soon the garden’s pride

Transplanted to another’s bower, would bloom and blush a bride.

Alas for human happiness! ’twas then as it is now,

The fairest flowers are the first beneath the storm to bow:

Dark is the dawn of that young life—dimmed is the lover’s smile–

He weeps upon the broken stem of the lily of the Nile.

Faint through the rolling ages, we hear the anguished cry,

And onward swell the tears that flowed till misery’s springs were dry,

While her pure and spotless memory, in frankincense and myrrh,

‘Smells sweet and blossoms in the’—pitch—‘tis all that’s left of her.

Now for that lover, so forlorn, that broken-hearted youth,

No fiction shall my page adorn, but plain, unvarnished truth;

Ere twelve short moons he dried his eyes, forgot his lady gummy

And wooed another, who in turn, was maiden, wife, and mummy.

Three thousand years and more are fled—a strange, unthought of race

Is dwelling in what was to her a quite unheard of place;

And Britain’s honored Queen is throned in that most favorite spot.

Which now is called old England—and was then—the powers knew what.

From those far shores adventurous feet have wandered to the land

Where the crocodile and ibis in mummied glory stand,

And eager hands have bartered gold for Egypt’s buried daughter,

To bring her to the western world across the flowing water.

Three days (a magic number) she now holds a matineé,

For fate decrees that strangers here cerements rend away;

Each throbbing heart in stillness waits, till gliding from her c

The Ancient and the Modern are meeting face to face.

Like her own goddess, veiled she attends, before our wondering gaze

And on her shrouded form once more, behold the sun’s warm rays;

Leave her awhile in mystery—‘tis fit that she should keep

Her solemn watch one little day, ere we invade the sleep.

Young antiquity, we welcome thee! In silent eloquence

Thou speakest to our spirits, though dumb to ear of sense,

And still thou shalt embalmed be in every memory, while

We think with awe-struck wonder on the maiden of the Nile.

Unwrap the clinging vestments—lo! She bursts upon the sight,

With the jewels on her dusky form, like stars upon the night;

She lived, loved and died, and was forgot—her history is told,

And it is now then as it was, before the days of old.”.